Harassment Under a New Lens

This was a late-breaking, quick-turnaround illustration for the Sunday edition of the Bay Area News Group family of newspapers. I kept it very simple and was pretty much done in just a couple of hours. The story by Kay Murphy and Thomas Peele is at this link.

Drawn in Manga Studio and Photoshop!

The illustration was requested and I immediately cringed at the notion of having to come up with something for a story about sexual harassment. Topics of that nature are extremely tricky to illustrate in a way that will avoid offending a lot of people. I resisted and tried to wriggle free of it. An illustration about sexual harassment that will run on the front page of a respectable newspaper is too fraught with danger.

When it became clear that it couldn't be avoided, I consulted with colleagues and we all squirmed uncomfortably. Since the story hinged on an incident involving a professor of astronomy I opted to focus on that aspect, and this idea occurred to me when I looked at an image of a large telescope.

I'm pretty happy with it. It's kind of cute, but not too silly; or, perhaps, it's a little silly without being too cute. Or maybe it's both of those things, but it was the best I could come up with. Yeah, that's probably it.

Page designer Chris Gotsill got ahold of it and made it look very nice on the page.

I haven't heard that anybody complained, so I think I got away with it.